Craig Burnett, an associate professor of political science at Hofstra University, presented an overview of understanding and interpreting polls, concluding the three-part “Political Science Talks Politics” series, on Thursday, Nov. 14.

The Department of Political Science and Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency co-sponsored the event, which was held in the Guthart Cultural Center Theater.

“Polls are a snapshot in time,” Burnett said. “They are, for the time period in which they are taken, the best representation we can get. That does not mean they were valid for anything that happened before or anything that’s gonna come in the future.”

Dating back to 1916, Literary Digest, one of the most widely read news magazine in the country during its time, would send out a “straw poll” to their readers to predict the results of the upcoming election. However, the straw poll did not represent enough of the voting public and led to the downfall of the magazine in 1936.

“Straw polls are not scientific,” Burnett said. “It’s not just sheer numbers that matter, but it’s who’s voting and where.”

Public opinion research began by conducting in-person interviews or mail-based surveys. Both methods are ineffective due to the cost and the diligence required to complete, according to Burnett.

The next method used was polling through the telephone and random digit dialing, a more effective technique.

“You can randomly dial numbers and get a random house, and if you do this enough times, you end up with a nice representative sample,” Burnett said. “This is sort of revolutionary because it’s a lot cheaper.”

The problem was that no one saw the cellphone coming.  

“The fact of the matter is that nobody ever predicted we would ever give up our landlines,” Burnett said. “This has created a problem for public opinion research that you cannot rely on random digit dialing anymore.”

“People rarely use landlines anymore and if they do, no one ever picks up an unknown number,” said Nicole Nolasco, a sophomore journalism and creative writing double major.

Looking toward the future, Burnett suggested that polling is increasingly adopting an online format.

“This has its own set of challenges and … biases, but it’s extremely cheap, and more and more and more, it is the case that people have access to online formats,” he said.

In order to send out a poll, it must first be constructed. According to Burnett, the initial step is to “define our population,” typically by seeking out “likely voters.”

Next, a questionnaire is created after a goal and the parameters are established from the pollsters.

“Question wording is an art, it’s not a science,” Burnett said. “Any time you write a question, chances are you are going to build in to that some sort of bias, or some sort of push or some sort of pull that is going to cause answers to change.”

Then, a sample of respondents is drawn using one of the methodologies of polling stated above, particularly through the telephone or online, according to Burnett.

Once the sample has been gathered, the results are analyzed and the pollster decides how they want to publicize them.

When it comes to the 2020 presidential election, Burnett is expecting a higher voter turnout based upon his understanding of the polls.

“A lot of states were close,” Burnett said. “Once the states are close, the cats out of the bag. Turnout goes up. Everybody feels it, campaigns adapt to it, everybody starts to behave like it matters.”

The higher turnout, however, will make it more difficult to predict the outcome based on likely voters because “[there are] going to be new voters, [there are] going to be inconsistent voters and [there are] going to be young voters,” according to Burnett.

Based on Burnett’s lecture, Nolasco agreed that polling could “dramatically” affect the 2020 election.

“As [Burnett] was describing, Biden is leading in the Democratic polls, and those voting could often look to the polls and see who is voting and base their decision, come Election Day, on that,” she said.

Burnett reminded the audience to think about the presidency at the state level because “polls are probabilistic, not deterministic.”

“As someone that doesn’t have a political background, it’s important that Hofstra hosts events like these to provide opportunities for students to learn more about the functions of our government and political systems,” said Sarah Graziano, a sophomore journalism major, highlighting the significance of the “Political Science Talks Politics” series.